Nammah is back with her splendor

I choose to risk my significance, to live so that which came to me as seed goes to the next as blossom, and that which came to me as blossom, goes on as fruit. 

From I Will Not Die an Unlived Life by Dawn Markova

Ah...after our year of fallow, Nammah and I are back with an insatiable desire. This first week of summer for me, the plants were carefully transitioned from the grow lights in the studio - to the newly put together but not quite finished greenhouse - to their permanent homes in the womb of Nammah's earthen soil. It feels SO good!

4 beds of tomatoes (around 40 plants of over 16 different varieties) - 2 beds of peppers - 19 winter squash plants plus summer squash - brussel sprouts, broccoli, celery, 4 varieties of carrots, 2 varieties of beets, parsnips, turnips, rutabaga, 2 kinds of kale, collard greens, spinach, 2 kinds of chard, multiple varieties of lettuce, beans of all sorts, edamame, melons, cilantro, basil, onions AND don't forget the garlic planted last fall!

The perennials are doing well. Honey berries will produce fruit this our third year, asparagus plants provide a few spears a day, and the blueberries and strawberries are full of blossoms.

What a contrast from last year. I couldn't even get inspired to post - though I made an attempt. I started a blog post last fall but never finished it. I wrote: It is fall already. I know it happens every year but this year was different. It is almost as if the seasons didn't happen. Something was missing. I didn't plant seeds. I didn't run my hands through and around the soil. No harvest to create with. No abundance. Paradoxically no scarcity either!

There is an interesting paradox in open space. It tends to fill! Our intentions for this year of open time and space were to be able to do more of other things. Namely, to finish the multitude of projects left undone; fill the empty space with something else. What happened was that the time was filled by the perception of abundance - leading to scarcity. The summer filled with all that rushes in when one says; "Sure, I can do that. We don't have garden to tend this year." We did have a lot of fun - kayaking Pictured Rocks, Canoe trip to the BWCAW, backpacking at Point Reyes, singing tour and family visits in Colorado, singing for the International Holocaust and Genocide conference in the UK. We went places! In the meantime, weeds filled the empty space in the garden. 

The final decision for this experiment came after a conversation with Rabbi Amy, who articulated the mandate of the 7 year fallow - Shmita - in such a convincing manner, it felt like it could potentially be a sacred summer! A literal translation of "release" - I felt released from the obligation of the typical summer. I was released to see what else emerged. The paradox, for me, is now the need to create meaning out of the fallow - when my "work" in the garden has always been that which has provided my grounding and connecting to the sacred at the same time. The garden - her rhythms and metaphors are so central to who I am-to the rhythms of my being - I find myself feeling literally OFF this fall.

Maybe that's the lesson in the fallow. To feel the OFF, the empty, the paradox - to create new meanings of what WAS and to become re-enchanted with was made more sacred in its absence.

Re-enchanted IS what I am. And grateful for the lessons from the past year. There is real beauty in this picture from last summer - the chickens had free range of the garden. The sunflowers came up wherever they felt like it. We even harvested a LOT of volunteer cilantro! I'm sure I'll find moments of being overwhelmed this summer. I always do. More than once I will ask; "Why do I do this? It's so much work!" Even expressing understanding of fast food - "so I can be free to travel and play!" I am SO predictable. I am what I am.

But THIS summer - I walk around looking at each blossom and a Peter Mayer lyric plays in my mind; "For they needed someone to see them - you my child are awake."  I feel awakened by summer - even more so by the process of digging my hands into the dirt again - planting seeds to blossom - tending blossoms to fruit.

Hannah is awakened by nature as well!

Cheers to Summer 2017 - officially declared the year of Nammah!